Judy Blue is an artist from Jacksonville, Florida, USA who gained popularity for her detailed illustrations. She creates artwork featuring fabulous creatures, cartoon characters and other beautiful imagery. Judy is sharing her tips and trick on how to stay creative, her experience winning Arteza Con and much more. Keep reading to learn more!
— Tell us something about yourself and your creative path?
I'm a mother of 3.. with 2 girls and 1 boy. I've always had a love of art ever since a young age. About 2 years ago I left my full time job to be a stay at home mom and spend more time with my kids. Eventually with the support of my husband and few friends, I got back into drawing after many years and now have been able to do it fulltime from home and become a full time freelance artist. I've taken part in a few art shows and have attended numerous comic conventions throughout the United States to sell my art and have been loving it ever since!
— Tell us about the character you created for #ArtezaCon?
I've always enjoyed challenging myself to try new techniques and styles so I was happy to take part in the ArtezaCon Challenge. Once my girls found out it was superhero related they wanted to jump on board and help me create our hero.
Our hero is a 17-year-old girl named Iris that lives with her mom Rain who was a famous artist that ran a fancy art gallery in the city. One day after school Iris went to her mom’s gallery and while she was waiting for her mom to get back she started to look (snoop). While there, she came across a glowing bag hidden away in a secret storage room and later discovered she not only inherited her mom's creative skills but the same powers her mom once had years ago which gave her the ability to create whatever she imagined with capabilities to manipulate and control anything she created to help others in need. She later becomes the superhero known as... Aesthete.
My 14-year-old daughter and I came up with her cool backstory since she has such a creative mind for story telling. While my 8-year-old, Gaby, is our lil artist so I created her look based off a rough sketch she did showing how she wanted our hero to look and she made it very clear she was to have colorful hair (especially since i won't let her dye her hair ) and there was to be NO Cape! I wanted her to have a simple clean outfit and chose it to be white which worked out perfectly cause it's like a blank canvas in a way. I originally did a traditional painting of our hero using a variety of some of Artezas acrylic paints on a acrylic sheet and when I completed it I showed it to my 14-year old who at the time happened to be away and was upset cause I forget to add our heros bag and tools from our story... I however didn't want to mess up the original so i then went ahead and redrew it digitally while keeping the original look to her.
— Why did you decide to draw her?
One of the main reasons I wanted to draw her was because I really enjoy working and creating things with my kids, especially because they have such a great imagination. Anything that allows me to bond with them on that level, especially if it's art related, I'm all for it.
— How long does it take you to draw such a character? Сould you describe the stages (each step) of your drawing?
That's a hard one to answer because there are many things to consider with every piece I do, especially if I'm in my zone. Anytime I create anything I always begin with a rough sketch then work my way onto lineart. Choosing what color palette to use and work with, blending in shadows, adding highlights and doing details are typically last. As far as timeframe, it varies and depends on what medium I am working on. Whether I'm doing a traditional piece or materials I'm using such as paint, color pencils, markers or even if it's a digital piece but from start to finish it can be anywhere from 20min to 8hrs or more. The traditional piece, in this case, for our hero took me about 5 to 6 hours to do from start to finish which was mostly spent blending colors while digital was a bit less time consuming especially since I already knew what she was going to look like and what colors I was going to use. The most challenging and time consuming thing for me most of the time is coming up with concepts and definitely picking out colors.
— Are you a professional illustrator?
I don't consider myself a "professional" exactly as I still have SO much more to learn... but it's definitely something I am wanting to improve on and develop much further in.
— Did you follow #ArtezaCon and those who entered?
Of course! I LOVE following the challenges you do especially because I for one feel we get so much inspiration from one another. These challenges give us the opportunity to come across some amazing art and other talented people some of which I started following because of work they've done.
— Which style of character drawing do you like most?
It's very hard to choose. I love a bit of everything really but just to name a few I’d say some classic manga like Sailor Moon and Inuyasha or even modern animes like My Hero Academia are really cool. However I'd definitely have to say Disney style art and animation has always been extra special to me especially since I was younger..but then there's other unique art styles I love such as Tim Burton... It’s kind of a hard question cause I like each of them for their own unique styles.
— Where do you share your works besides Instagram?
I originally had Twitter and few other social media accounts but I find it hard to keep up with all of it. Currently, I mainly share on Instagram, my online shop or recently now that I've opened up a Patreon (judyblu) which I share on there as well anything I'll be currently working on or even if I'm at a shows in the Artist Alley or at a convention.
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